London 2012: Don't Tweet if you don't have to, it breaks TV coverage

Olympic organisers have told sports fans attending the Olympic games to avoid tweeting and sending text messages because doing so overloads the data networks and therefore affects television coverage.

"Commentators on Saturday's men's cycling road race were unable to tell viewers how far the leaders were ahead of the chasing pack because data could not get through from the GPS satellite navigation system travelling with the cyclists," reports Reuters, after speaking to the International Olympic Committee.

The IOC spokesman added: "Of course, if you want to send something, we are not going to say, 'Don't, you can't do it', and we would certainly never prevent people,

"It's just - if it's not an urgent, urgent one, please kind of take it easy."

He conceded to the news agency that asking people not to send messages at key moments "may not have an awful lot of effect". He is probably right.

On Friday, almost 10 million tweets were sent from around the globe about the opening ceremony, as people tuned in to see what Danny Boyle had prepared.

"Here at Twitter, we saw a worldwide total of 9.66 million mentions of the Opening Ceremony from the start at 8pm last night until the end of its broadcast in the US as people across the globe took to Twitter to get closer to the action," the company said on its blog.

Even Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the World Wide Web, got in on the action, tweeting from the centre stage during the Opening Ceremony.

His tweet: "This is for everyone" has been retweeted more than 10,334 times.

Will you be tweeting from the Games? Let us know in the comments below.